Mitteilungen 2009

14. Dezember 2009: Thanks to ever larger telescopes, such as ESO’s Very Large Telescope, and ever more sensitive instruments, our astronomical knowledge continues to progress at an incredible pace, answering many questions, but also raising exciting new ones. The 42-metre European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT), presently being planned by ESO, will be able to investigate these secrets and answer some of the most prominent open questions. ESO has prepared a brochure presenting the science that can be done with the E-ELT, and entitled “An Expanded View of the Universe”. The 52-page brochure seeks to give a flavour of the kind of fundamental questions that the E-ELT may finally answer. However, just as Galileo was astounded to find mountains on the Moon and moons orbiting Jupiter, the most exciting discoveries are probably those that we have not yet even imagined. This document was prepared by the E-ELT Science Office with the help of the ...

10. Dezember 2009: ESO's Residencia at Paranal Observatory, Chile, has just been selected to be among the "top 10 buildings of the decade" by the UK’s Guardian newspaper. Cerro Paranal is a 2600-metre high mountain in the Chilean Atacama Desert, perhaps the driest on Earth. It is the home of ESO’s Very Large Telescope, the most advanced observatory in the world. The high altitude site and extreme dryness make excellent conditions for astronomical observations, but this comes at a price. To make it possible for people to live and work here, a hotel, or Residencia, was built at base camp, allowing staff to escape from the arid outside environment. The award-winning design by the architects Auer & Weber includes an enclosed tropical garden and pool under a futuristic a 35-metre domed roof and is based on a subterranean L-shape. Perfectly integrated into the Mars-like landscape of Paranal so as to make as little ...

8. Dezember 2009: The Eyes on the Skies project initiated as part of International Year of Astronomy 2009 (IYA2009) celebration now entering its final weeks has won an international accolade. After originally being selected as one of eight finalists from a field of over 254 entries from 39 countries, the Eyes on the Skies movie and book went on to receive the Special Jury Award for its high production value at the MEDEA 2009 Awards held in Berlin, Germany on 4 December. The annual MEDEA awards recognize excellence in media-rich educational materials. The competition’s judges said that Eyes on the Skies is “a very well designed and attractive presentation of quite a challenging subject” and is “authoritative without being confusing.” In this way, the project serves as “an excellent example of integrated educational narrative and complementary use of various media,” the judges also said, owing in part to its “superb script.” The Eyes ...

16. November 2009: A team of astronomers and engineers at the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have made the first interferometric measurements of radio signals — so-called “fringes” — of an astronomical source from the observatory’s 5000-metre “high site” of Chajnantor. This is an important technical step for ALMA, as it used a full suite of the production equipment, including two of the 12-metre diameter antennas, and sophisticated electronic systems for receiving and correlating the signals. This is the first time that all these complex items, almost all of which are at the leading edge of technology, have been used together as a complete system. The antennas were moved into position on the Chajnantor plateau on 16 and 17 October. Over the next few weeks the system was connected together and tested. Finally, “fringes” were measured, the effect seen when signals received by a pair of antennas are combined with exactly the right ...

5. November 2009: On 30 and 31 October 2009 the ESO Director General, Tim de Zeeuw, was invited to visit the Vatican City, as part of an international group of renowned astronomers, on the occasion of the International Year of Astronomy 2009. The visit included a tour of the Tower of Winds at the Vatican — the first location of the Vatican Observatory, built between 1578 and 1580 at the time of the Gregorian Reform of the Calendar — a visit to the Vatican Secret Archives, the Sistine Chapel, and the astronomy exhibit AStrum 2009 at the Vatican Museum. On display in this exhibition of astronomy and instruments are 130 items, including Galileo Galilei’s original handwritten notes detailing his observations of the Moon, and his publication "Starry Messenger" from 1610. The highlight of the day was a private audience with Pope Benedict XVI who addressed the group. In his speech, the Pope said: ...

27. Oktober 2009: The Museum of Science and Technology in Santiago has opened its renovated Astronomy Hall, a project supported by ESO in Chile. Massimo Tarenghi, ESO Representative in Chile, and Mónica Rubio, President of the Corporación para la Divulgación de la Ciencia y la Tecnología (CORPDICYT, the Organisation for the Popularisation of Science and Technology), inaugurated the new Astronomy Hall at the Museum of Science and Technology on 22 October 2009. The museum is located in the Quinta Normal Park, in the heart of the Chilean capital, Santiago. This project is part of celebrations in Chile of the International Year of Astronomy 2009 (IYA2009), the global celebration commemorating the first use of a telescope to view the Universe by Galileo, 400 years ago. The Museum of Science and Technology in Santiago, run by CORPDICYT, is visited every year by 100 000 people, mostly children and young people. The Astronomy Hall was created ...

26. Oktober 2009: In close cooperation with ESO as part of its International Year of Astronomy 2009 activities, the production companies parallax raumprojektion and fact&film; have produced a unique 3D documentary about the most powerful visible-light telescope in the world, ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). One of the world’s largest telescopes, capable of taking some of the sharpest pictures of the night sky, the VLT is located in a breathtaking, arid environment, providing astronomers with superb sky conditions as they study the deep Universe. The film, The EYE 3D — Life and Research on Cerro Paranal, stars the young scientist and ESOcast host Dr J, aka Joe Liske. In June 2009, a German film crew who specialise in making 3D movies accompanied Dr J on a trip from ESO Headquarters in Garching, Germany, to the landscapes of the Atacama Desert in the North of Chile, one of the driest sites on Earth and ...

19. Oktober 2009: On Monday 19 October 2009, astronomers will report at the international ESO/CAUP exoplanet conference in Porto, Portugal, on a significant discovery in the field of exoplanets, obtained with the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher, better known as HARPS, the spectrograph for ESO's 3.6-metre telescope. ESO will host a media teleconference on Monday 19 October 2009, at 13:45 pm CEST, to be streamed online. The teleconference participants are: Stéphane Udry, Geneva Observatory, Switzerland Xavier Bonfils, LAOG, Grenoble, France Nuno Santos, University of Porto, Portugal To participate in the teleconference, reporters must get accredited by contacting Henri Boffin by email (hboffin@eso.org). Reporters will need to have access to a computer, with a recent version of Adobe's Macromedia Flash Player installed and an Internet connection with a minimum bandwidth requirement of 56 kB/s. Further information will be provided to the accredited reporters. Graphics and supporting information will be shown during the teleconference, ...

5. Oktober 2009: In Chile, 5–11 October is the National Science & Technology Week. This year, it is dedicated to the International Year of Astronomy 2009, and ESO is playing an active role. Everyone is invited to the following events and exhibitions: Monday 5 October sees the launch in Antofagasta of the GalileoMobile, an itinerant outreach project. To celebrate the beginning of the GalileoMobile’s two-month-long journey, there will be a public star party, in collaboration with Universidad Catolica del Norte and Explora Conicyt Region II. Place and time: Plaza Berta González, Universidad Católica del Norte (Av Angamos 0610), starting at 19:00. On Friday 9 October in Santiago, Explora Conicyt and Metro of Santiago are inaugurating the new interactive exhibition "Noticias del Universo" (see video), developed specially for the International Year of Astronomy. In the coming years, this exhibition will travel to all regions of Chile, thanks to Explora Conicyt. Guided tours for schools ...

18. September 2009: As of today, 18 September 2009, ESO is pleased to announce that important parts of its extensive website have been translated into eleven European languages, covering all ESO member states as well as some additional countries. Many more readers will now be able to learn all about ESO's impressive telescopes and projects in their own languages. These include the most advanced observing facility in the world, the Very Large Telescope, as well as the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array and the planned European Extremely Large Telescope. ESO press releases will also now be available in these languages, in addition to descriptions of ESO-related events taking place in the ESO member states. This new service is courtesy of the ESO Science Outreach Network (ESON), a network of individuals in several countries — including all the ESO member states — who serve as local contacts for the media and the general public in ...

16. Juli 2009: ESO Director General Tim de Zeeuw is the 2009 recipient of the Dirk Brouwer Award from the Division on Dynamical Astronomy of the American Astronomical Society. The Dirk Brouwer Award is granted to recognise outstanding contributions to the field of Dynamical Astronomy, including celestial mechanics, astrometry, geophysics, stellar systems, galactic and extragalactic dynamics. The citation for the award reads: "Tim de Zeeuw burst on the dynamical scene with an outstanding PhD thesis on the dynamics of triaxial stellar systems. His mathematically elegant description of the density profiles and orbits in separable Staeckel potentials invigorated the entire field and remains a cornerstone on which more recent understanding of elliptical galaxies is founded. Subsequently, he applied his physical understanding of orbital dynamics to the more complicated potentials of real galaxies that contain density cusps, black holes, etc. In more recent years he was one of the co-founders of the hugely successful SAURON ...